Thinking of adding humor to your presentation?

Adding humor in the presentation is the nicest way to connect and engage with the audience.

Here are examples of fun, humor, interest, and participation that you can use to give rise to your presentation to life, and keep your audience attentive and enjoying themselves. 

Many people in the presentation field refer to these presentational elements as 'spice'. Like the spice of a meal, spice in a presentation gives it an elegance - promotes the senses, adds texture and richness.

Below, are sort of the various ways of 'spice' elements you can put into any presentation:

• Examples and case-study references

• Diagrams (charts, graphs, maps, and etc )

• Video-clips and sound-clips

• Surveys and statistics

• Questions and 'hands-up' feedback

• Images, cartoons and video-clips

• Funny quotations (be careful not to hurt the feelings of anyone)

• Stories

• Games and exercises and icebreakers

• Statistics (which dramatically improve audience 'buy-in' if you're trying to persuade)

• Inviting a volunteer to take the stage with you.

• Audience participation exercises

• Asking the audience to do something physical (like- finger-snapping, clapping, deep breathing, blinking, shouting, and other)

• Acronyms

• Asking the audience to engage with each other (for example self-introductions to person in the next chair)

• Inspirational quotations

• Body language, and the changing pitch and tone of your voice.

• Props, samples, physical objects 

• Prizes, awards and recognizing people/achievements

• Fascinating facts (research is easy these days about virtually any subject)

• Fables and analogies

• Straw polls (a series of hands-up votes/reactions which you record and then announce results)

• Book suggestions and recommendations.